The hospital called and said a little boy had listed me as his emergency contact. I laughed nervously and said, “That’s impossible. I’m 32, single, and I don’t have a son.” But when they told me he wouldn’t stop asking for me, I drove there… and the moment I walked into his room, my world stopped…

Ethan nodded.

“She said you were the only person who ever saw the real her.”

The words settled heavily in my chest.

Julia.

At twenty, Julia Mercer had been magnetic. Loud laughter, reckless road trips, dancing barefoot in parking lots at midnight.

Everyone loved her.

But I had also seen the parts nobody else noticed.

The bruises she hid beneath sweaters.

The panic attacks she brushed off as migraines.

The nights she cried quietly in our dorm bathroom after fights with her boyfriend, Daniel.

I begged her to leave him.

She begged me to stay out of it.

Then one night during senior year, I called campus security after hearing screaming through her apartment wall.